BERLIN- While the spread of lacrosse in the local area and across the Eastern Shore has been well documented for the last few years, the rest of the state including the tradition-rich areas on the west side of the Chesapeake had to take notice this year with four Bayside Conference teams appearing in state championship games and capturing two titles.
With the proliferation of youth lacrosse programs across the shore including Beach Lacrosse, the Greene Turtle teams and the Sea Bay Lacrosse Club, to name a few, the Eastern Shore has been producing some state championship-quality teams and dozens of varsity high school athletes ready to succeed at the next level. However, the general feeling, at least in the old bastions of high school lacrosse history in Baltimore and Annapolis, for example, and even the Washington, D.C. area to some extent, is that high school lacrosse on the shore is largely provincial and hasn’t yet risen to the level of the tradition-rich areas.
That perception is changing quickly, however, as the Eastern Shore is producing state championship teams at an increasing rate. For example, last week the Kent Island boys’ varsity lacrosse team repeated as the state 3A champion, beating River Hill, 20-7 in the title game. In the state 2A championship, Easton won its first title, beating Southern of Anne Arundel County.
The Bayside Conference produced two state finalists in the girls’ tournament, including the Stephen Decatur girls, who ran the table and won a conference championship and a regional championship before its perfect season came to an end against Century, 10-7, in the state 3A title game last week. Likewise, Queen Anne’s, which lost to Decatur in the Bayside Conference championship game, ran through its 2A bracket to win a regional championship before falling to Manchester Valley, 16-5, in the state title game.
To summarize, the Bayside Conference sent four teams to state championship games and won two titles in the only divisions in which they had eligible teams. The Bayside Conference doesn’t have any schools in the state 4A classification.